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2018 American Political Scene

538 analysis of 2018 Senate race as it stands now. bottom-line: standard media assessment of Senate being a toss-up is overrated. the map is so unfavorable to Dems that even given the expected Dem wave, Senate control by them can only be rated at 35-40%, not 50%.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

First, where do I find evidence that Transport Logistics International is the same as, or even somehow linked to Uranium One?

Second, is there a problem with processing Russian nuclear fuel into civilian use? Is there some reason this doesn't take their fuel and make it ours (and Canada's)? Should someone in Russia be investigating how Those People (you know, Obama-Clinton-Soros-types) managed to get their hands on Russian nuclear fuel?

Fourth, related to the TLI case, Vadim Mikerin was sentenced to four years in prison for bribery and FCPA violations on December 17, 2015, after seven years of investigation and trial. Wasn’t that entire period part of what we call The Obama Era, Featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?

And, fifth, isn’t Rod Rosenstein, the prosecuting attorney in Mikerin's case, also the Acting Attorney General in the Trump-Russia investigation?

First, where do I find evidence that Transport Logistics International is the same as, or even somehow linked to Uranium One?

Second, is there a problem with processing Russian nuclear fuel into civilian use? Is there some reason this doesn't take their fuel and make it ours (and Canada's)? Should someone in Russia be investigating how Those People (you know, Obama-Clinton-Soros-types) managed to get their hands on Russian nuclear fuel?

Fourth, related to the TLI case, Vadim Mikerin was sentenced to four years in prison for bribery and FCPA violations on December 17, 2015, after seven years of investigation and trial. Wasn’t that entire period part of what we call The Obama Era, Featuring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?

And, fifth, isn’t Rod Rosenstein, the prosecuting attorney in Mikerin's case, also the Acting Attorney General in the Trump-Russia investigation?

All good questions, you should apply the same level of attention to detail with the anti-Trump claims.

Is Trump's Election The Revenge Of The White Working Class?BY MORRIS P. FIORINA
1/14/18

No election in recent decades has seen so much attention paid to the “working class.”

Accelerating with the splintering of the Democratic Party in the mid-to-late 1960s, the importance of social class as an electoral cleavage slipped behind cleavages based on race and ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation.

But for many commentators, the 2016 election witnessed a revolt of the masses.

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni writes, “The arc of this election has been one of disillusionment, bending toward disarray. Trump’s initial window of opportunity was so many Americans’ belief that Washington, Wall Street and the media had been irredeemably corrupted by self-interested elites.”

On the other side of the political spectrum, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan writes about those whom she calls the “protected”: “

The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully. . . . [The protected] are figures in government, politics and media. They live in nice neighborhoods, safe ones. Their families function, their kids go to good schools, they’ve got some money. All of these things tend to isolate them, or provide buffers.

Anti-elitism has a long history in the United States, of course, more so than in some European countries like Britain where the “upper” classes historically had been accorded “deference.”

In the late nineteenth-century populist era, anti-elitism focused on economic elites—the trusts, the moneyed interests, those who, in presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan’s words, “would crucify mankind on a cross of gold.” And it was only a short move from there to an attack on the politicians who were controlled by the economic elites.

In the contemporary era, the crash of 2008 precipitated the Great Recession. Irresponsible and even fraudulent financial practices were all too apparent, but economic elites responsible for them paid only a token price.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner may be correct in asserting that the bailouts were necessary to save the economy, but it was not necessary for him to pressure AIG to pay off Goldman Sachs 100 cents on the dollar, then to pressure Attorney General Eric Holder to quash criminal indictments in the HSBC case. The bailouts and resulting deficits contributed to the rise of the Tea Party and then the Democratic Party’s electoral debacle in 2010.

The status quo election of 2012 may have suggested that the populist moment had passed, but the 2016 campaigns suggest otherwise. Popular resentment seemed to shift its focus away from economic elites and more in the direction of political elites who had failed to control or even abetted the actions of economic elites.

Bernie Sanders and Trump attacked outsourcing, free trade agreements, tax provisions, and other economic policies supported by both parties that hurt some Americans. Sanders charged that the Democratic Party had become too dependent on Wall Street for financing, with resultant inattention to the economic distress experienced by many Americans.

The establishments in both parties attempted to squelch the Sanders and Trump insurgencies—successfully in the case of Sanders, failing completely in the case of Trump—but in both cases reinforcing the grievances of their supporters and adding to the perception that party leaders were allied to a corrupt status quo.

Some commentators, including Washington Post writer Marc Fisher, see this as the fertile soil in which Trumpism grew:

Trump ran against the elites and won. . . He defined the election as a people’s uprising against all the institutions that had let them down and sneered at them—the politicians and the parties, the Washington establishment, the news media, Hollywood, academia, all of the affluent, highly educated sectors of society that had done well during the time when middle-class families were losing their bearings. . .

All he had to do, he said, was connect directly to the pains, fears and frustrations of a nation that had been smacked around by globalization, terrorism, rapid demographic change, and a technological revolution that enriched and enraptured the kids with the stratospheric SAT scores, but left millions of Americans watching their jobs fall victim to the latest apps, overseas outsourcing, robots, and a stunning shift in the nature of commerce and community.

As such charges indicate, the notion of “elites” today has broadened to include cultural elites—people who work in academia, the professions, the entertainment industry, the media, and the higher levels of government, most of whom have advanced educations, if not always exceptional incomes.

This appears to be something relatively new, perhaps because the cultural elite a century ago likely would have been a subset of the small economic elite. Most Americans then engaged in manual rather than mental labor and very few went to college—few Americans even graduated from high school.

The first indications of a backlash against cultural elites became apparent in the 1960s with the third-party candidacy of George Wallace. The economy was fine and for a time only got better as the Vietnam War ramped up, but racial disorders and the rise of the counterculture made the “pointy headed intellectuals” who excused them a target.

So were anarchists, a “catch-all term that could mean students, liberals, the press, militants, etc., depending on the occasion,” according to Marianne Worthington of University of the Cumberlands.

In an eerie foreshadowing of Trump’s rhetoric, Wallace threatened, “I want to say that anarchists—and I am talking about newsmen sometimes—I want to say—I want to make that announcement to you because we regard that the people of this country are sick and tired of, and they are gonna get rid of you—anarchists.”

The spread of mass education (today about 30 percent of the over-twenty-five population has a bachelor’s degree) and other social and economic developments have spawned a large upper-middle class whose tastes and lifestyles often differ from those lower on the economic ladder.

Although they generally deny it, many of those in the new class feel a degree of condescension or disdain for the middle- and lower-middle-class people who populate the heartland.

As Andrew Sullivan writes:

Much of the newly energized left has come to see the white working class not as allies but primarily as bigots, misogynists, racists, and homophobes, thereby condemning those often at the near-bottom rung of the economy to the bottom rung of the culture as well. . . .

They [the white working class] smell the condescension and the broad generalizations about them—all of which would be repellent if directed at racial minorities.

The 2016 election gave such people the opportunity to strike back.

The mainstream media’s strong opposition to Donald Trump may well have helped him. Much more than in earlier decades, today’s media are concentrated in the wealthiest locales in America.

New York is not on the list of cities bypassed by the recovery and the Washington, DC, area is recession proof in addition to being wealthy. Why should condemnation of Trump by such fortunate people carry any weight with voters living in Michigan or Pennsylvania?

And did Democratic elites really think so little of such Americans to believe that Katy Perry, Beyoncé, and Madonna would sway their votes?

The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan made an intriguing argument that even the heavily anti-Trump tenor of late-night comedy shows actually helped Trump:

Though aimed at blue-state sophisticates, these shows are an unintended but powerful form of propaganda for conservatives. When Republicans see these harsh jokes—which echo down through the morning news shows and the chattering day’s worth of viral clips, along with those of Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and Seth Meyers—they don’t just see a handful of comics mocking them. They see HBO, Comedy Central, TBS, ABC, CBS, and NBC.

In other words, they see exactly what Donald Trump has taught them: that the entire media landscape loathes them, their values, their family, and their religion. It is hardly a reach for them to further imagine that the legitimate news shows on these channels are run by similarly partisan players—nor is it at all illogical.

No wonder so many of Trump’s followers are inclined to believe only the things that he or his spokespeople tell them directly—everyone else on the tube thinks they’re a bunch of trailer-park, Oxy-snorting half-wits who divide their time between retweeting Alex Jones fantasies and ironing their Klan hoods.

People who enjoy elite status tend to lose touch with the interests and concerns of non-elites. Progressive Mike Gecan writes,

Many Dems either don’t know how to relate to people with moderate or mixed views or they don’t want to. They prefer rock stars and celebrities to bus drivers and food service workers.

They like cute sayings and clever picket signs, not long and patient listening sessions with people who have complicated interests, people who might not pass the liberal litmus test.

In a similar vein, the rant by former MSNBC commentator Krystal Ball is worth quoting at length:

They said they were facing an economic apocalypse, we offered “retraining” and complained about their white privilege. Is it any wonder we lost? One after another, the dispatches came back from the provinces. The coal mines are gone, the steel mills are closed, the drugs are rampant, the towns are decimated and everywhere you look depression, despair, fear.

In the face of Trump’s willingness to boldly proclaim without facts or evidence that he would bring the good times back, we offered a tepid gallows logic. Well, those jobs are actually gone for good, we knowingly told them. And we offered a fantastical non-solution. We will retrain you for good jobs! Never mind that these “good jobs” didn’t exist in East Kentucky or Cleveland.

And as a final insult, we lectured a struggling people watching their kids die of drug overdoses about their white privilege. Can you blame them for calling bullshit?

All Trump could offer was white nationalism as protection against competing with black and brown people. It wasn’t a very compelling case, but it was vastly superior to a candidate who enthusiastically backed NAFTA, seems most at ease in a room of Goldman Sachs bankers and was almost certain to do nothing for these towns other than maybe setting up a local chapter of Rednecks Who Code.

While recent political commentary suggests the importance of sentiments like those expressed in the preceding quotations, evidence needed to evaluate them is hard to come by—surveys include measures of racism and sexism, however imperfect—but to my knowledge our major databases include few time series measures of class identity or resentment.

Blunt indicators—education, income, occupation—are the measures most commonly used by those who study class.

In the aftermath of the election, political commentary emphasized the divide between the college educated and those with no degrees. The exit polls reported that college graduates cast a majority for Clinton, non-graduates a majority for Trump.

White college graduates cast a narrow plurality for Trump, however, as female graduates cast a majority for Clinton and men for Trump. An Economist/YouGov panel study allows a finer breakdown that reveals some additional significant nuances.

The common observation that among whites only female college graduates cast a majority for Clinton overlooks an important distinction: Hillary Clinton at best broke even among white women with only four-year degrees; only among postgraduate women do we find majority support for Clinton.

Interestingly, despite the attention focused on less-educated whites, the gender gap if anything is largest among those with postgraduate degrees, where men broke evenly or even slightly for Trump.

The sobering reality for the Democratic Party is that it did not just have a problem with white working class men in 2016; it appears to have lost the white middle class—men and women—as well, albeit more narrowly. Link
_________________

This article clearly spells out the reasons for my disdain of and disgust for the liberal Left.

I think it's fairly safe to say that Trump is a scabrous part of the disease, rather than the cure (I also don't think there's a cure to be had, but that's a story for another time).
But he clearly didn't just magically appear in the White House. Let's see if the Left can figure out why and make the needed course corrections.

I'm not holding my breath.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, than to take rank with those poor, timid spirits who know neither victory nor defeat ~ Theodore Roosevelt

538 analysis of 2018 Senate race as it stands now. bottom-line: standard media assessment of Senate being a toss-up is overrated. the map is so unfavorable to Dems that even given the expected Dem wave, Senate control by them can only be rated at 35-40%, not 50%.

51-49 seems likely to me.

It saddens me very much, but it seems likely McCain is going to die. Arizona might have two Senate seats up for election come November.

There's nothing impossible about agreeing to a bilateral trade agreement with Germany. With the European Union, not exactly, but you can have a deal with the EU that does not involve joining the EU. Canada is negotiating just such a deal. This is fundamentally different from an agreement like the WTO.

Germany is a sovereign nation, it can do whatever it wants. The EU is not a nation and has no sovereign authority.

Trump's still stupid, of course, but I don't particularly give a damn about these particular instances. We should continue to needle them about a bilateral trade deal, because the EU is a freakin' stupid idea.

EU nations absolutely cannot negotiate trade deals on their own. You either deal with all of them or none of them. Like kato posted, member nations have ceded certain aspects of their sovereignty to the EU.

This article clearly spells out the reasons for my disdain of and disgust for the liberal Left.

I think it's fairly safe to say that Trump is a scabrous part of the disease, rather than the cure (I also don't think there's a cure to be had, but that's a story for another time).
But he clearly didn't just magically appear in the White House. Let's see if the Left can figure out why and make the needed course corrections.

I'm not holding my breath.

the article's argument is essentially the Bernie Sanders argument, although it is a bit confusing that he's mixing up moderates with the WWC. the WWC is not "moderate" in the US political sense, as the Third Way is Wall Street-friendly.

of course, i think the main problem with the Sanders argument is that he thinks economics > culture. if this were wholly true, then HRC would have beaten Trump.

i think the most important lesson of the Trump election is the importance of the salesman aspect. HRC was not a good saleswoman. that was the #1 factor, because she ran a professional campaign otherwise. Trump was a good salesman, and that was enough-- even if he ran a clown show of a campaign otherwise.

moreover, I think back to Bill Clinton winning a huge swath of the country despite his OG neo-liberal views. his southern charm persuaded the WWC that he was for them...even when his policies would mean that they would take a significant brunt of the economic pain that was going to follow.

trying to pin everything on social liberalism, i think, is not quite right. after all, this same electorate elected by significantly larger margins a black constitutional professor from Hawaii, lol.

Last edited by astralis; 16 Jan 18, at 05:43.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

the article's argument is essentially the Bernie Sanders argument, although it is a bit confusing that he's mixing up moderates with the WWC. the WWC is not "moderate" in the US political sense, as the Third Way is Wall Street-friendly.

of course, i think the main problem with the Sanders argument is that he thinks economics > culture. if this were wholly true, then HRC would have beaten Trump.

Another problem with the Sanders approach is that his core supporters are every bit as committed to identity and gesture politics as anyone on the Clinton side. While Sanders did have his share of blue collar people, his 'army' was college educated white kids who see working class voters as a worthy cause so long as they shut their bigoted, ignorant mouths.

Sanders & his people didn't just have a somewhat lopsided message, they had a sales team very bit as bad as HRC's.

trying to pin everything on social liberalism i think, is not quite right.

I don't blame social liberalism, I blame the liberal Left.

Originally Posted by astralis

after all, this same electorate elected by significantly larger margins a black constitutional professor from Hawaii, lol.

And wound up confused, frustrated and disappointed when their chosen leader failed to actually, you know, lead.

Originally Posted by Bigfella

Another problem with the Sanders approach is that his core supporters are every bit as committed to identity and gesture politics as anyone on the Clinton side. While Sanders did have his share of blue collar people, his 'army' was college educated white kids who see working class voters as a worthy cause so long as they shut their bigoted, ignorant mouths.

Yep, that's it in a nutshell. The condescending contempt the liberal Left has for "Joe Six-Pack" practically oozes out of their pores.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, than to take rank with those poor, timid spirits who know neither victory nor defeat ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Yep, that's it in a nutshell. The condescending contempt the liberal Left has for "Joe Six-Pack" practically oozes out of their pores.

That is true for some of them. Certainly a lot of the middle class activists.

I would add two things. One is that there are parts of the 'liberal left' who are more sympathetic to 'Joe Sixpack' than anyone else on the political spectrum. They just don't get on TV as much. The other is that the contempt of the 'liberal left' is matched & exceeded by that of the right. They are just as prepared to pretend they care as long as 'Joe Sixpack' is anti-abortion, dislikes the right minorities at the right time, joins the military and shuts his damned Commynist mouth about healthcare, wages, conditions, unions & the like.

The 'liberal left' will condescend to 'Joe' from here to sundown, the GOP will let him die in the street & then blame it on him. One is contemptible, the other is inhuman.

Sanders & his people didn't just have a somewhat lopsided message, they had a sales team very bit as bad as HRC's.

worse, rather: they couldn't even persuade fellow Dems to nominate him as their party standard, after all.

i always knew that policy held little interest for most in the US Prez election, but it was, and is, shocking to me the extent to which pure ability to sell matters.

well, one thing is obvious-- I doubt any Presidential nominee will have their HQ in Brooklyn anymore, lol.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

i always knew that policy held little interest for most in the US Prez election, but it was, and is, shocking to me the extent to which pure ability to sell matters.

What, even after the ACA? "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage, and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass,"

Far better it is to dare mighty things, than to take rank with those poor, timid spirits who know neither victory nor defeat ~ Theodore Roosevelt